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Hardly anyone follows Indian domestic cricket these days. IPL, with its concept of city based teams, was a brave venture. Especially after the ICL floundered. So the IPL built teams around 'icons' who were the stars of Indian cricket - Sachin, Ganguly, Dhoni, Dravid, Sehwag, Yuvraj and Laxman. Each had been captains or at least vice captains of India.

What was glossed over was that a number of these icons were nearing retirement. Not the ideal state to be in for this high adrenalin version of cricket. The purpose of the organisers were served with advertising building regional identities and teams positioned across brand ambassadors.

Kotler would have approved - demographic segmentation, brand identity - no business school grad could have scripted this better.

There was a slight hitch. A number of the icons didn't perform in the first version. Sachin didn't play through most of IPL one thanks to an injury. Dravid and Laxman flou…

Two matches. Razzmatazz. An opening ceremony with Zulu dancers. Everyone going gaga over the logistics at South Africa.

To start with a change of scene on telly from Manmohan Singh and Advani expressing their hurt with each other and animated TV panelists dissecting this.

But IPL 2 has been a hot potato so far. Political differences, impatience, inflated egos, the lure of lucre led to its shifting across the hemisphere. Doesn't matter that India, in the process, got clubbed with Pakistan as a place where it is unsafe to play cricket.

Soon after this happened some country refused to come to India to play the Davis Cup! Close to thirteen people come to watch a Davis Cup match in comparison to cricket. But we have layed ourselves bare to potshots from across.

Hopefully the matches will be closer than what we saw on day one.

Matches in South Africa. Captained by foreigners. Coached by foreigners. Wouldn't 'International' be a better word for the I in IPL?

About Me

Kalyan Karmakar began
blogging in 2007 when his wife, who was tired of listening to him talk about
food all the time, opened a blog for him.

She named his blog www.finelychopped.net. The blog recently won the award for the best general food blog category in the FBAI 2017 Awards,

He has recently published his book, The Travelling Belly, which has been published by Hachette India. It is a food travelogue based on his travels across India :

Kalyan started his career as a market researcher and then moved into food writing. He is a cloumnist at the Indian Express, NDTV Foods and Femina. His writings can be found at the Mumbai Mirror, BBC Good Food India, The India Food Network and Scoopwhoop. He is a special guest on Mumbai on Demand on 94.3 Radio One FM and talks every Wednesday between 1 to 2 pm on Food trends.

His YouTube channel is called: Kalyan Karmakar and he is the co-wner of the channe: The Finely Chopped.
He conducts personalised food walks in Mumbai where he introduces the city to
participants through the dishes of his favourite food haunts.

To unwind he heads to the kitchen where he loves to play with ingredients and
his mantra is hassle-free, gut feel-based cooking.

Kalyan is a Bengali who now lives in Mumbai with his wife, who is a Parsi from
Mumbai. He moved in here close to two decades back from Kolkata after spending
his early years in Iran and the UK.

When asked what she feels about her introducing him to blogging, Kalyan’s wife
Kainaz says "I have forgotten the taste of hot food thanks to his
photographing everything on the table before we can eat it".